Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

Tag Archives: Cato Institute

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 23, 2017:

Antonin Scalia, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the Cato Institute, along with the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Independence Institute, filed a “friend of the court” brief on Monday urging the Supreme Court to take under review a lower court’s decision upholding Maryland’s nearly total ban on so-called assault weapons.

Prior to passage of the Firearms Safety Act (FSA) in 2013, Maryland’s gun controls were bad enough: The law permitted those citizens “in good standing” to possess semi-automatic rifles, but only after passing an extensive (and costly) background check along with meeting various other requirements. Starting October 1, 2013, those controls became positively onerous: Any firearm designated as an “assault weapon” was banned from private possession altogether. The law included “assault long rifles,” “assault pistols,” and “copycat weapons.” That automatically included the semi-automatic (one squeeze of the trigger fires a single round) rifles that are most popular among Americans, including Marylanders, including the AR-15 and AK-47 models and knockoffs.

The new law allowed exceptions for “active law enforcement officers.”

Stephen Kolbe, a life-long resident of Maryland living in Towson, owned a “full-size semi-automatic handgun” but wanted, for self-protection purposes, to purchase one of those now-banned semi-automatic rifles. Under the new law he couldn’t, and so he, with the help of the SAF, filed suit claiming Maryland’s new law violated his Second Amendment-protected rights. He also claimed that by giving LEOs an exception, the law also violated his rights under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, April 12, 2017:

Mug shot of Charles Ponzi (March 3, 1882 – January 18, 1949).

The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General reported in 2015 that nearly half of the nine million people receiving SSI (Supplemental Security Insurance) benefits were being overpaid, running up $17 billion in excess disbursements over the previous 10 years.

Such overpayments were just the beginning of the story. On Monday, a former Kentucky attorney pleaded guilty to filing more than 1,700 false SSI disability claims in a scheme that netted him millions in fees that he lavishly dished out to his co-conspirators: a Social Security administrative law judge and a psychologist, among others. In his plea bargain, former attorney Eric Conn fingered Judge David Daugherty (whom he said birthed the scheme originally) and Dr. Alfred Adkins.

The fees that Conn collected ran into the millions, while Social Security dished out some $550 million in benefits to beneficiaries who willingly participated, some of them saying later that they didn’t really know what was happening but were happy to pay Conn $200 in cash under the table for his “advice” and assurance that their claims would be approved.

A former Kentucky attorney pleaded guilty on Monday to filing more than 1,700 fake disability applications under Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. The complex scheme netted Eric Conn millions in kickbacks while costing SSI an estimated $550 million in phony benefits paid out to unsuspecting beneficiaries.

Conn’s plea bargain accused his co-conspirators, psychologist Alfred Adkins and Social Security Administrative Law Judge David Daugherty along with other unnamed individuals, of working with him in the scam. Conn claimed that the scheme was hatched originally by Daugherty.

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 29, 2016:

John Allison

Donald Trump met with former banker John Allison on Monday in a meeting that was largely ignored by the mainstream media. It remains unclear whether Allison was being interviewed for the job of secretary of the Treasury or was just giving Trump some advice from a free market perspective.

Either way, it’s a breath of fresh air in an era where statism and excessive hubris (the idea that mere politicians and economists can guide, even stimulate a $20-trillion-dollar economy with monetary policy) has reigned for decades.

Right after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of North Carolina in 1971,

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 3, 2015:

The 2010 Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom.

The latest report from the Cato Institute comes on top of a long and increasingly unhappy series of reports on freedom’s decline in America. Enitled the “Economic Freedom of the World” and updated with the latest data available (through 2013), the report ranks the United States in 16th position, down from second place when the index was first published in 2000. The United States has fallen behind such countries as New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, Jordan, Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Chile.

It used to be that the way to get ahead was to work harder, work smarter, find your passion (à la Tony Robbins), marry the boss’s daughter, or be the boss’s daughter (or son). But, according to the latest study from the Cato Institute, the best way is to “sell your soul to the company store” (apologies, Johnny Cash): Work for the government. Preferably, the federal government.

Since the 1990s, federal government employees have enjoyed greater increases in salary growth than those in the private sector, with federal workers in 2014 earning 78 percent more, according to the latest report from Cato, entitled “Downsizing the Federal Government.”

In 2014, based on numbers provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the average federal worker in 2014 made

This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Thursday, October 8, 2015:

A year ago, when the Cato Institute published its Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors, the best governor, Pat McCrory of North Carolina, scored 78, giving him an “A” rating by Cato. The country’s worst governor, Jerry Brown of California, scored 19, earning him an “F.” His rating was seven full points behind Colorado’s Governor John Hickenlooper, who scored a 26. At the time, Cato said this about Governor Brown:

This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, August 24, 2015:

U.S Postage Stamp, 1957

The fifth annual report from the Fraser Institute, “The Human Freedom Index,” showed the United States falling further in a global measurement of personal, civil, and economic freedom, from 17th place in 2011 to 20th in 2012 (the latest year for which reliable data is available). Ahead of the United States are Canada in 6th place and the United Kingdom, in 9th place. The United States barely edges out the Czech Republic and Estonia, in 21st and 22nd places respectively.

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, April 3, 2015:

While the national media was focused on California Governor Jerry Brown’s announcement of his state’s first mandatory cuts in water use by residents due to the ongoing drought (allegedly caused by man-made climate change), little was said about two Gallup polls and a study out of Germany showing those concerns about global warming to be greatly overblown.

The paper out of Germany’s Max Plank Institute for Meteorology concluded that gases blamed for the earth’s allegedly continuing climb in temperature have far less impact on that climb than previously estimated. Those estimates have, as a result, been thrown into serious doubt, according to two climatologists from the Cato Institute who reviewed the study:

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, February 18, 2015:

Section 215 of the Patriot Act is set to expire June 1, and each side in the upcoming battle to renew, reform, or let expire this unconstitutional abridgement of freedoms is rolling out its arguments.

Section 215 is often referred to as the Patriot Act’s “library records” provision because it allows the FBI to order a library or any other source to produce, without a warrant showing probable cause (as required under the Fourth Amendment), all “tangible things” belonging to its target of interest including “books, records, papers, documents, and other items.” That includes books borrowed and websites visited by the target while at the library. Niceties demanded by the Fourth Amendment are ignored in Section 215 as long as the FBI “specifies” that its order is “for an authorized investigation … to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

One of those favoring renewal of Section 215 is Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 30, 2015:

Except for a modest and temporary decline in federal government spending, the United States would have fallen even further from its current 12th-place spot in the Heritage Foundation’s 2015 Index of Economic Freedom just released this week. The authors were brutal in their assessment of the reasons behind the country’s frightful fall from near the top of the index a decade ago:

The assumption behind raising and spending a billion dollars, as the Koch brothers Charles and David seem to support, is that with enough money, enough grassroots action, and sufficiently elegant voter software, election successes like that of last November can be repeated in 2016. This past weekend, Freedom Partners, the Koch’s equivalent to a chamber of commerce for wealthy conservatives (each of its 200 members pays a minimum of $100,000 in annual dues), announced at its Palm Springs winter meeting that it was going to raise $900 million to pour into the upcoming presidential election.

Spokesmen for Freedom Partners, the Koch Brothers-funded “chamber of commerce” and sponsor of their annual winter meeting in Palm Springs, announced last weekend that its network of over 200 wealthy conservatives is planning on raising nearly $900 million to invest in the 2016 elections. This is more than double what the network raised and spent during the 2012 presidential campaign, and exceeds what both political parties spent that year put together.

Freedom Partners is building on the momentum from the November elections that gave Republicans control of the Senate and expanded their majority in the House of Representatives. As Freedom Partners President Marc Short remarked, “2014 was nice but there’s a long way to go.” He noted that his group’s ultimate goal is to make the ideals of a free market “central” in American society, adding, “Politics is a necessary means to that end.” Freedom Partners invested more than $400 million in those midterm elections.

This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, December 31, 2014:

The Cato Institute continues to update its Human Progress website with sources from around the world showing graphically the enormous progress human beings have made in every conceivable area of their lives, especially over the last 50 years.

From communications to the environment, from housing to transportation, there’s a data set that shows how far the human race has come in a very short period of time.

Cato’s primary purpose in continuing to develop its HumanProgress.org website, already remarkably robust, is to dispel the common myth that things are getting worse, and at an accelerating rate:

This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, October 30, 2104:

Tom Corbett at the McCain rally at the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport

On Tuesday, one week before the election which will determine whether Pennsylvania’s Republican Governor Tom Corbett (shown) gains a second term, he signed into law a state-wide “preemption” law that ensures that all gun laws across the state’s 2,639 counties and municipalities cannot be more restrictive than the state allows. In its announcement of Corbett’s signing of the bill, the National Rifle Association (NRA) urged its members to “thank Governor Corbett for being a steadfast advocate of your Second Amendment rights and for signing [the bill] into law.”

The NRA might better have asked its members to show their appreciation by voting for him next Tuesday: He’ll need every vote he can get.

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, October 29, 2014:

In a remarkable display of pure unadulterated pragmatism, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law in 2014 an unheralded tax reform bill that has won approval from two conservative think tanks: the Cato Institute and the Tax Foundation. In Cato’s “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors” released earlier this month, the authors were positively ecstatic about him:

In a primary election that Paul Rothenberg, a non-partisan political analyst, called “the political version of the San Francisco earthquake,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) lost overwhelmingly to obscure economics professor Dave Brat. This is the first time since 1899 that a House Majority Leader has lost his reelection bid in his party’s primary. Despite being outspent by Cantor by more than 25-to-1, Brat breezed to victory on Tuesday, capturing 55 percent of the vote to Cantor’s 44 percent.

Virtually ignored by establishment Republican groups like Club for Growth and Heritage Action, Bart won by basing his campaign on

This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, June 6, 2014:

In less than three months, the War on Poverty announced by then-President Lyndon Johnson in August 1964 will be 50 years old. There ought to be some victors in this war that has cost the American taxpayer more than $17 trillion. And indeed, there are: the initial program, the Economic Opportunity Act, was funded by (in today’s diluted money) $178 billion. Today, there are 126 federal welfare programs and numerous state ones spewing forth taxpayer monies at the rate of a trillion dollars a year. That means government jobs for millions to monitor, track, follow, and spend, and then request additional funds for next year.

On February 12, 2014, the National Rifle Association (NRA), 19 states and 34 members of the House of Representatives asked the Supreme Court to review a New Jersey court’s decision restricting Second Amendment rights of its citizens. Leading the requests is Attorney General of Wyoming, Peter Michael, who sees the danger in letting the decision by the 3rd District Court in New Jersey stand: it could require that every other state

Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him, better take a close look at the American Indian. – Henry Ford

Using their portable forge, members of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery fabricated various iron implements and traded them to the Mandan and Hidatsa Indian tribes in what is now North Dakota, in exchange for corn, beans, squash and tobacco to sustain them during the winter of 1804-5. Several months and a thousand miles later the Corps was surprised to see that one of their implements, an axe,